" Lies can travel so fast, from one person to another. You can never take them back. It is like shaking out a pillowcase full of feathers at the top of a mountain on a windy day. Do you think you would ever be able to gather up every single feather again?”
“No, I guess not”, said the little girl.
“No, you can never find all the feathers because you will never know where they have gone – or how far”, replied the tree. “It’s the same with lies, rumours, and gossip”. "

― Martha Begley Schade , The Listening Tree: Befriending Nature